CHAPTER X.
DOL BEAG IS FLUNG INTO A FIRE.
And now you will be coming to meet Dan and me on the long road back from the South End, and coming on with us like a good comrade, for Dan that day walked like a man that was fey, and I, who would be thinking I kent him, might just as weel have been walking with a stranger. Below the shoulder o' the big black hill, before ye come to the Laird's Turn, he halted.
"Man, Hamish, the hills are just vexed wi' me this day," said he, "and
I ken a' their moods, as weel as a bairn kens his mother."
"To me," said I, and I would be searching about in my mind for the right words, like a pedant, for was I not college-bred—"to me," said I, "they aye look just grandly contemptuous," and, mind you, my heart went out to the great strong man at my side because of the soft place in his warm heart for the grim old hills, for I would aye be feared to talk that way to him, for fear of his laughing.
"I ken what ye mean by grandly contemptuous too," said he. "I have felt that way when I would be gathering sheep, and looking up at the crags and the rocks above me, and the head o' the hill would be turned from me in disdain, and I would be feeling like the wee red ant crawling on the beard o' a warrior, asleep on a glorious battlefield. I canna just be putting the right words to it, but, man, I feel it inside o' me.
"There's days in the early summer mornings before the heat-haze has lifted when a man can see the hills lying on their backs wi' their faces to the sun, like giants resting, and he can see the smile on the brow o' them when the sun beats down, and it's fine to be imagining that they're laughing to one another; and on these days the hills are aye friendly to a man, and when he lies down among the heather the spirit o' the hills will be knowing him, and his forebears, since the hills were established; but ah! they will be glooming at me the day.
"There's a frown on the brow o' the Urie, and his face is hidden from me, and listen to the grumbling and flyting o' the burn. They're a' vexed, Hamish, but we're to have company down through the glen, for yonder will be Sandy Nicol driving his stots to the bay."
We made up on the drover, a wild unkempt man with a great red beard wagging on his broad chest, and fierce blue eyes that seldom winked, and it seemed to me that his dogs—for two deep-chested, lean-flanked black collies slunk at his heel—it seemed to me that they kent his mind before he spoke a word, for they worked the wild hill-bred stots like the dogs the old folk will be telling about.
"Ye would be looking to the hogs," said he, as if he had kent us from the hillside and no greeting was needed; and as he spoke I thought of an old door swinging on rust-eaten hinges, for his voice was deep and harsh, as though he opened his mouth seldom to speak; and indeed such was the case, for he lived on his farm among the hills alone with his dogs.